Essential health and safety requirements EHSR

Directives are the European laws published in the Official Journal that give us the essential health and safety requirements (EHSRs) that shall be followed by product suppliers. These are commonly called the Essential Requirements (ERs). The directives deal with legal and procedural issues, such as assessment procedures, certification, implementation, enforcement, technical files, declarations, CE marking, and other basic concepts. Examples of primary directives are the Low-Voltage, Machinery, and EMC directives. The General Product Safety and Product Liability Directives are basic directives dealing with enforcement and civil prosecution that are applied to all products. The directives also mandate the publication and mutual recognition of harmonized standards. 

European standards are clearly the main path toward conformity. Although use of European standards is voluntary in one sense, European harmonized standards have become the technical governing rules and are in reality the obligatory way for manufacturers to reduce uimecessaiy risks and to meet the EU directives. In practice, only published European harmonized standards, such as ENs (EN = European Norm), should be used to show conformity. European harmonized standards (ENs) offer the simplest means of meeting the essential health and safety requirements (EHSRs) of the directives. 

For machinery, an interconnection of parts, one of which moves under power, causes the complex product to fall within the scope of the Machinery Directive (EC 2006a) (MD). All hazards posed by the machinery are subject to the Essential Health and Safety Requirements (EHSR) relating to the design and construction of machinery and given in Annex I of the Machinery Directive. Note that apparatus that moves under purely manual effort is out of scope of the Machinery Directive, except for manually powered lifting equipment. 

The Regulations have attached to them an extensive list of requirements called Essential Health and Safety Requirements (EHSRs) which must be complied with by manufacturers or suppliers. Among them are quite generic safety requirements covering electrical systems, including ... 

In the UK, the type testing and certification work has been carried out by the Electrical Equipment Certification Services (EECS), which is part of HSE, and by SIRA Test and Certification Ltd. The Equipment and Protective Systems Intended for Use in Potentially Explosive Atmospheres Regulations 1996 will change this, because they introduce a legal requirement for compliance with the Essential Health and Safety Requirements (EHSRs) and the application of the CE mark using the applicable conformity assessment procedures, which may involve the participation of a notified body. This is a complicated area but, in summary ... 

---